


Polychotomy

by Domenika Marzione (domarzione)



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Found Family, Gen, POV Andy | Andromache of Scythia, andy through the years
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:53:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25903132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/domarzione/pseuds/Domenika%20Marzione
Summary: Andy as a sum of parts.
Comments: 38
Kudos: 181





	Polychotomy

She wasn't a warrior before her first death; the Scoloti weren't fighters back then. But by the time she'd started calling herself Andronika the Scythian, she could bring death to anyone without suffering too many of her own. In between were countless teachers, some chosen for the purpose and most imparting their lessons without invitation. She learned their weapons and their methods and took them both as her own, sometimes as a gift from a tutor but usually off their corpses because the nature of her undying existence meant that the lesson continued until she bested the teacher. She died constantly back then, at first because she couldn't defend herself and then because she would initiate the attack. Anger has been her constant companion for six thousand years, rage her most familiar friend, and she is nothing if not generous in providing for her faithful comrade. She fed her anger well and it grew fat and happy in her heart. 

It was Lykon who taught her that those flames had burned too much else to ash. "You are more than an animal," he would tell her. "Stop fighting and fucking like you are capable of nothing else."

Lykon had had patience and she'd sometimes hated him for it, for the way he could _wait_ for the world to present them with their purpose. He'd tell her that they had time, endless time, and lashing out at whatever was closest did not make it pass any faster or grant them any understanding. It took centuries before she could appreciate that, before she could re-learn discernment and the virtue of walking away. The necessity of it. 

When he dies for the last time, he is at peace even as she and Quynh are shattered into pieces. But they are ready for their future without their teacher. And when they find Yusuf and Nicolo, they are prepared for their pupils. 

* * *

The first time Nicolo treats her and Quynh like _women_ , she uses her axe to slice off his arm and watches him bleed to death at her feet with confusion in his dimming eyes. She sees the anger in Yusuf's face and she revels in it, is fed by it. But she sees the anger in Quynh's eyes, too, and that is cold water on the fire within her. 

"You have many languages besides violence," Quynh tells her after dragging her to outside the campfire's light. Yusuf is crouched by Nicolo's still body, dagger in his hand as he watches the darkness where he knows they've retreated. "Speak in one of them. They are worldly men and will understand." 

The boys - and they are children in her eyes despite that they are both bearded men - have not been too much trouble since she and Quynh found them. The relief of meeting was perhaps too great to allow for anything else, as much for the end of the weird and constant dreaming as for the knowledge that there are others and they are not alone. But the edge of newness and wonder has been sanded away from their meeting and Yusuf's and Nicolo's personalities, individually and as long-term companions, are starting to emerge from under the docile obedience of the acolyte. And she has no patience or interest in retraining them like colts born in a different camp with lesser standards. 

They have not tried to force themselves on her or Quynh and she doesn't know how long that will last; they are not blind to women however much they are bound up in each other, but their restraint has held this far. And until tonight, neither of them had acted like she or Quynh were weak or in need of care or protection. If this is but the first stumble on a steep decline, however, she will not let them tumble her or Quynh down the rest of the way. 

Nicolo comes back to life with a gasp and a cry and both she and Quynh watch Yusuf tend to him, soothing him as his arm regrows without loosening his grip on his dagger. 

"They dreamt of us," Quynh says in an urgent whisper. "And we of them. We are not drawn together to hurt each other."

The incident leaves scars even as Nicolo's arm is fine well before dawn. Andromache too slowly comes to realize that Nicolo is a man of kindness and service and he hadn't been treating her and Quynh like inferior beings but instead as equals worth the effort. Which was something Yusuf had already long known and his inability to see how she could not is a wedge between them that cannot be loosened by entreaty. It is finally moved not by time or soft words, but by action. Violence is not her only language, but it one she can be more eloquent in than she is usually given credit for. 

* * *

After more than five thousand years, she knows that Lykon was wrong - they are not better than other animals, they are only plagued by delusions of superiority. Her desire to live up to his expectations of her nonetheless can wax and wane, borne up by her family and dragged down by everyone around them. 

She doesn't want to spend the better part of a decade tending to the sick as the Black Death sweeps across the world and she doesn't, not really. But Nicolo does and Yusuf will stay by his side and so she and Quynh serve as protectors, finding food and clean water and herding the helpless to where the boys are offering solace to those with nothing - and then fighting off the human vultures who follow the scent of death and weakness. Nicolo sometimes plays the priest again when there is no holy man nearby - or if the holy man is a coward she and Quynh cannot force into action by swordpoint - but it hurts him deeply to do so. There are parts of the rites he is no longer allowed to do by the Church's decree and his inability tears at him in ways neither Yusuf nor they can soothe. He does them anyway sometimes, first very rarely and then with less hesitation, when his patients' dread of dying without sacrament is so extreme that it cannot be borne or contained. Nicolo's relationship with his god and that god's earthly kingdom is a complicated knot of thorns he can neither discard nor keep from wounding himself with and Andromache has learned to let him struggle with it rather than try to rip it from him (again). Monotheism is a sticky mess she doesn't fully understand and Yusuf's lack of success despite his understanding of both it and Nicolo is proof of its nature. 

Which does not mean that there are not the occasional theological arguments in the family, including one that starts because she stops a rapist, beheads him, and tells the girl to take the head back to her village and warn them that the Old Gods are still here and still watching. 

They collect foundlings and orphans, first by accident and circumstance and then with some intent: infants left to die, children abandoned by their parents through death or cruelty, the sole survivors of attacks. It's an excuse to stop wandering for a few years, to rest from war knowing that there will always be a fight they can join in the future, to remember how fragile humanity is and how full of wonder it can be. She doesn't like thinking of motherhood, of her own long past, but she can look at their temporary wards and see a purpose that has nothing to do with preserving a family line or protecting a clan's wealth. The children stay with some or all of them for a few years, long enough for them to grow to strength and independence but before they can truly notice that their caretakers are not aging. They are set up as apprentices or given over to trustworthy families (with the understanding that undermining that trust will bring unspeakable consequences), a little gold sewn into their pockets, and never seen again. There are two exceptions: Marie, a deformed simpleton who lives her whole long and happy life in Yusuf and Nicolo's care, and Ismail, who finds Quynh by accident forty years later when she's bleeding out in an alley in Homs and takes the revelation of their secrets as a sign of Allah's goodness and not the work of demons. They visit him twice before he dies surrounded by his grandchildren. 

* * *

It is these experiences that guide them when it comes to Sebastien, to support his desire to return to his family. They are all still paying for that mistake, but it did not seem like one at the time. Sebastien delighted in his boys and his pride in them as they grew to manhood made them all lighter and happier people in a time when the world seemed determined to grind them into fine dust. It made Andromache miss Quynh with an ache she hadn't felt so acutely in a century, but it also made her smile in a way she hadn't in at least that long. She'd forgotten how ridiculous children were; it had been centuries since they'd last had one to care for. 

Sebastien moved his family around every few years to hide his secret, but he could not hide it from them. He saw his first son married and hoped that the bride was not too curious, but then there was a second son with a wife and then grandchildren and when Andromache showed up on his doorstep, he just nodded agreement. His disappearance was only partial, however - he didn't want to leave his family behind and his sons were willing to deceive their wives to keep their father. But they were young when they made that choice and age brought resentment that curdled into something cruel. Sebastien has never told them all of the details, just the one story to stand in for the pain he felt when he found them in Seville after leaving his last son on his deathbed. 

They thought he was healing from it as they undertook the lessons in immortality they'd put off for forty years. They teach him to fight, to bleed, to die efficiently and they think the activity is good for him, that he is letting the physical pain blunt the metaphorical wound in his heart. He acts like it is, his humor returning and his interest in the world growing exponentially. He is such an infant in their eyes, still barely out of phase with what would have been his normal life, and his lack of historical context, his lack of experience, is both ridiculous and frustrating - all the more so because he's so fucking French even though France has been receding from the world's peak since the English dumped Napoleon on Saint Helena.

At no point do they consider that he is fooling them as much as he is fooling himself. And so it is a lie that is nurtured by them all, growing strong and sturdy with deep roots and strong branches. By the time they are Andy and Booker and Nicky and Joe, they are all so familiar with each other that they can't see that the poison in that lie has affected them all. Booker's pain isn't invisible, but they all think it's manageable. And that it persists allows Andy to nurture her own the way she used to tend to her anger, to let it shape the team and their work - and their lack of work when she just gets too tired for this shit anymore. 

"You're both depressed," Nile will tell her in the future. "He's suicidal and you just want to curl up and sleep." 

Nile doesn't want Booker to be exiled from the family, insisting that it will just make things worse for him. But their wounds are too fresh right now, Andy's literally so, and Joe and Nicky are deserving of care and compassion too. Andy doesn't think the exile will be very long, certainly not the hundred years, but right now they all need time apart to heal and forgive. And she wants to do her own reckoning in peace, accept her own role both in what happened with Booker as well as in history. She's been living on her anger for six thousand years and isn't sure what's left when that's taken away. 

**Author's Note:**

> [There is a post on Tumblr for this story if you'd like to like or reblog](https://laporcupina.tumblr.com/post/626462153471393792/polychotomy-domenika-marzione-the-old-guard)


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